


Aware of a Change in the Weather

by BugTongue



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Character death: A tomato plant, Hermann is a classist and Newt has no class, Illustrated, M/M, Panic Attacks, The Drift (Pacific Rim), illegal gays but in a good way, let hermann say fuck, side affects of drifting with aliens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 11:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8576923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BugTongue/pseuds/BugTongue
Summary: After Operation Pitfall, Newt disappears for five years of methodical self-destruction. He's just fine with his plant and his dirty house and his small mechanical projects.Then the Anteverse rears its ugly head for a second time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to dizzyondreams for beta-ing the hell out of this, and to laurenftagn for the illustrations!
> 
> Title is from "A Dream Within A Dream" by Oren Lavie. I highly suggest listening to the entire album.

It wasn't that he wanted to die, exactly. It wasn't that he blamed himself for the demise of people depending on him to be the smartest human alive (besides maybe Hermann). It also wasn't that he thought he had failed and deserved to languish in the aftermath of what should have been his greatest achievement for both himself and the world at large. The truth was that he was angry, and tired, and beside himself with a feeling of grief that sank its sharpened claws into his lungs and drowned him in it.   
  
He needed a break. He needed to be away from the smell of antiseptic and the powder inside rubber gloves and  _ chalk _ .   
  
And so he found himself inside a coffee shop in post-war Chicago. This fake hole in the wall-looking place that charmed the part of him which still liked watching humans try too hard. It was a good place, if nothing else; the coffee was cheap and strong and he could usually hang out for a few hours before someone started looking too hard at him from a table away.   
  
It was hot enough outside to choke him and make him see funny, but it wasn't so bad with his hands wrapped around sweaty plastic, sipping at something strong enough to keep him awake for the third day in a row and filled to the rim with ice. He worried the straw with his teeth like some kind of chew toy, leg bouncing double the speed of whatever new-wave electronic dance band was playing. He made a CD once and handed it to them and they'd played the damn thing so often he had to ask them anonymously to space it out a bit more, let something new-new shine through, y'know?    
  
His thoughts fuzzed over with something dim and dusty until he knocked his knee into the table leg to break free. Too public a place for that shit, not that he wanted to deal with it alone either. Honest to god flashbacks. He got flashbacks like some kind of combat vet, as if it hadn't just been him cowering in a bunker until an alien war machine ripped the roof off and  _ tasted  _ him. Fuck him, his hands were shaking again.   
  
He sipped coffee the color of sun-bleached wood through his masticated straw until only air came up noisily through the ice cubes.   
  
"Ex-excuse me. Aren't you that guy? The doctor-" Newt closed his eyes and let out a breath through his nose before turning towards a young man who looked to be the picture of city college kid. Asian features, Japanese maybe? Totally American either way, local accent and mannerisms. He stopped himself to pay attention. "Yeah, haha you are-"   
  
"Nope, not me man." Newt smiled at him lazier than he meant to. Damn, he’d have to get that brand of polish again if it was going to last this long. Orrrr that could also be the sleep deprivation. The kids face fell and he chewed his straw again to center himself on the situation. "Sorry, I know it’s kinda disappointing, I do get it a lot."   
  
"But you, sound just like him."   
  
"Mm I'm not him, lucky man though, saving the world. Or, helping anyway. Hey, uh, why don't you head to class and stay in school and all that, I think I'm gonna head out." Newt clapped him on the shoulder and used that as an anchor to pull himself to his feet, and then to stay on them when his vision got all grainy.   
  
"Sir are you-"   
  
"Fine, fine. I'm fine. Nice jacket, that’s really fuckin' soft, I-I like that. Good jacket." He slurped ice water loudly and ambled back into the heat of the day.   
  
He'd been here for almost five years now getting himself well and truly besotted in the most archaic sense of the word. He wasn’t just three sheets to the wind, he had in that time thrown all his sheets into a gale-force wind of future befuddlement.   
  
No, Newton Geiszler did not necessarily want to die. However, considering the weight of dead friends and irreparable psychological trauma gained from garbage-drifting, he would much rather drink, sniff, snort, and smoke his way through a probable twenty or thirty more years than stick around for a natural lifespan.   
  
***   
  
When he had drifted home he collapsed in front of the window air unit until he felt less like jello and toothpicks improbably glued together. The house he was living in was only barely up to code and missing all furniture except a couch he found on the side of the road and a dilapidated shelf he'd over-stuffed with electronics he was working on. His fingertips were still burnt from his latest project. The shadows seemed to blend with the sharp orange glow coming in the west windows and open door like reaching fingers of begging hands, crawling long across the carpet and glinting off his glasses until the sun sank low enough to be cut off by taller buildings. Time whirred into a dusky blue, into a dark sky colored orange-purple-grey with smog and streetlights, and all the while Newt lay there sleeplessly.

 

It wasn’t until the world around him became a study in periwinkle that Newt gave up on sleeping for a while longer and pulled himself shakily to his feet to fill a mug with water from the sink. He downed it in one long pull and filled it again. He looked at the plant in the kitchen window and smiled softly.

 

“Hey there kiddo, got something for ya.” His mouth stayed open as he arched onto tiptoes to water the flourishing tomato plant. It’s leaves were the biggest contrast in the whole house, the largest and brightest splotch of color, with little green fruits hiding shyly nearer the glass. “Hope you like your breakfast, I made it special for you, just how you like it.”

 

He refilled the glass and sipped at it as he sat down in the lightly cluttered living room to work on fixing a toaster. The heating mechanism worked, but only if you held the lever down manually, the problem was the catch that held the lever in place was loose somewhere in the machine and he couldn't seem to find it even after pulling the whole thing apart. It wouldn’t be too-too hard to make another one out of what he had available, but if it was there he’d rather find it so he didn’t have to guess at the proper size and shape.

 

It was as he was slipping into the comfortable mind-space he managed while working that the memories came back, the blue and black and claws and  _ tongue _ . The feeling of the precursors, of the Anteverse, of the  _ precursors _ , looking into his mind and unwillingly showing him theirs in return.

 

_ Wrecking,  _

_ Planning,  _

_ Building, breaking, rebuilding _

 

He sat up and winced from the ache in his spine that told him he'd fallen asleep hunched over his toaster. Mind still extracting itself from sleep, he shivered. Sleep was always tricky and usually, these days, involved not wanting to be asleep for as long as possible afterwards. A quick glance to the side showed his mug tipped over and water sinking into the stained and gritty carpet, already partially evaporated. He must have been asleep for maybe an hour, the sky hadn’t taken on the richness of afternoon yet, so that left him still with most of the day to fiddle with junk.

 

He knew what he needed to make the images too slowly fading from mind fade faster, and lucky for him he had that pot of wood polish and half bottle of rum right at the base of the couch. Newt righted the empty mug and scootched over a few feet to crawl up onto the ratty cushions to get comfortable. The ache in his back subsided as his world spun, then settled somewhere above his roof as he set about getting completely and totally  _ fucked up _ .

 

 

***

 

Newton would have been just fine continuing down his path of self-destruction, a path which he cultivated as thoroughly as he did his tomato plant, if it weren’t for the people on his doorstep one day. The weather was hardly anything to be out in, muggy and wet and dirty as it was, but yet there were Hermann and Mako standing under a fuck you-sized umbrella looking like two wraiths in the gloom. He assumed they were a hallucination for the ten minutes it took for Hermann to clear his throat, looking like he had swallowed something less than satisfactory and rather sharp.

 

“I’m… So sorry to disturb you, we’re looking for someone-” Mako elbowed him and Hermann hissed before squinting into the room a bit more intently.

 

“S’me dude, what do you want?” He couldn’t stand the way his voice shot up into falsetto after so long managing to remain calm enough to grow into the more recent phlegmy growl.

 

Hermann was quiet, and Newt started to drift off again on somewhere into the stratosphere. This time it was Mako who spoke up with a sharper tone than he’d ever heard from her, at least, directed towards him from her.

 

“Dr. Geiszler, what has become of you? Get up, you have company.” She came across as petulant, slightly hurt, and more than a bit worried than authoritative, but still Newt did as she asked. Because she’s Mako. Mako gets what she asks for because she’s the kid. It doesn’t matter that she’s 24 now, he’s still 40 and that means she’ll always comparatively be a kid.

 

“Hey Mako, hey Hermann, yeah just uh…” He wet his lips with the sluggish slide of a papery tongue and waited for the room to settle down. “Come in, kick off your shoes, find a wall to lean against. What’s on your mind, guys?” He didn’t have the wherewithal to stand, and so he stayed slightly hunched over his knees with his fingers linked together and sticking out awkwardly before him.

 

“You must return to your post, Newton.” Hermann looked lost as he stepped just inside and folded up the umbrella, eyes scanning the paint peeling off the walls, the bottles and tools and accumulating dirt. “Have you been living here the whole time?”

 

“Mostly yeah, took me a few months to find a place you wouldn’t track me to though.” He told himself it was worth it to see the man’s expression grow stormy, he didn't quite believe it as he absently picking at his cuticles and swayed as if he were a stalk of grass in a breeze. “Turns out it was a waste of time, oh well.”   
  
“Don’t-” Hermann shut his mouth and closed his eyes for the duration of a breath, then leveled a glare at him. “Does this  _ hovel  _ have a working shower or will we have to stop in a hotel overnight?”

 

“Nice, I see what you're doing here, you assume I’m already agreeing to whatever it is you came to ask me to do. Newsflash, dick, I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere.” He flopped back and held in a sigh at the way it made Hermann’s edges fuzz. Mako swam back into view and her expression hurt a bit more than his high could keep up with.

 

“Dr. Geiszler, please, you are being extremely rude. We need you to come to Anchorage and help us figure out what’s going on with the Anteverse.” The Anteverse, that didn’t make sense. He, they- 

 

“We shut them out, Mako, nothing should be happening with the Anteverse.”

 

“I’m afraid not,” Hermann pulled his hood off (this jacket seemed to actually fit his frame, which was almost a shame) and yikes, looks like five years weren’t kind to him either. “We… Seem only to have closed one door in an entire hallway, and they’ve been testing the locks.” Newt stared at him as something hot and unforgiving billowed up inside him.

 

“Testing the locks. What do you mean  _ testing the locks _ , dude, you mean after all that, after… They’re still trying to come here?” It had always been a possibility. It had  _ always _ been a possibility, and one Newt had thought about on his worse days in the ‘Dome. In part it was even why he was out here ruining his own life. He cursed and slumped so far forward his head hung between his knees. “... Get someone else.”   
  
“There is nobody else, not with your qualifications and expertise.”   
  


“Get. Someone. Else. I can’t do this a second time.”   
  
He sucked in a sharp breath as Hermann grabbed his arm and roughly pulled him up proper. “This is not about you and it is no time for self-pity, you don’t... “ Hermann swallowed, looking uncomfortable once again as he let go of Newt’s arm. “You don’t deserve to be wallowing here in filth and disarray, you have done nothing so horrible.”   
  


Newton’s mouth slipped open, the after-effects of Hermann’s touch still radiating up his arm into his brain like strange echoes of touch, like the synapsys were on a delay. The words didn’t make sense, deserve this? He was entirely too high for this but he forced himself to focus. The Precursors were acting up again, the Anteverse was causing problems, and Hermann thought Newt thought he deserved…. What? He rubbed his face to buy himself time to process this.

 

And then he began to giggle.

 

“You really missed the mark there, dude.  _ Deserve  _ this, God, it’s like you think I’m out here to punish myself.” He let his hand flop back into his lap, limp wristed and hanging off his knee. “I came out here so no one could pick me up exactly like you’re doing right now. I’m fucked, Hermann. I fucked myself up, I can’t help you, I’m on too much shit and I’ve lost too much grey matter, because I’m never going back. Don’t you get that? _ I have done enough _ .”

 

Two visitors stood in a dark room, with the wreck of a man who was supposed to help them, and recalculated.

 

***

 

There was a time once in Hermann’s life that he believed everything would be alright if he could learn to peek in God’s pocket for spare change and scrap paper, if he could understand the world through a lens only a few others had ever truly bothered or desired to wield. He needed to know what was in the sky, and the hows and whys that made those heavenly bodies move. As he grew older he turned his gaze downward into the sea, but his view never changed. He thought that this was simply how people were; they changed their minds but still they would be the same at their core.

 

Hermann realized, altogether too late in his life, that he had no real understanding of how humans worked, or perhaps he did and Newton was simply an outlier. Newton, who was sitting in the back of his rental car crying. Or sleeping, or sulking, or whatever it was when Hermann had last opened his eyes. Mako was at the wheel looking focused yet weary.

 

He looked back over the shoulder of his seat only to find Newt watching him already. The rain on the windshield mixed with the car’s AC into white noise strong enough to drown out the words coming from the man’s chapped lips. Hermann faced him more fully and blinked away the remnants of his nap, shrugging off fatigue. “I’m sorry?”

 

“I said, I think we should stop in at a hotel sometime tonight before Mako strains her eyes and has to get glasses like us.”

 

“I am fine, Dr. Geiszler, thank you.”

 

Newton rolled his eyes and pulled one leg up by the ankle onto the seat, knee popping. “I’d also like to stretch my legs, a little bit.”   
  
“You look truly miserable Newton. Like a renaissance painting of Mary.” Hermann’s lips twitched as Newton raised one middle finger while sighing.

 

“You shouldn’t have come to get me.”

 

“I wish we didn’t need to. You seemed perfectly happy living in your own filth, but, alas.” Hermann stretched his back as he turned to face the road once more, a stiff roll of the shoulders as his eyes made to slip closed. “Perhaps we should stop, Miss Mori. I don’t think I can stay in this position for too much longer without medication.”

 

Newton sat in the back of the car with a potted plant in his lap and not much else, and when they arrived at the hotel it followed him in. It was set gently on the nightstand so that its leaves were mostly blocked from the unforgiving air conditioning by the older-style boxy television.

 

“I call inner bed.” He leaned against the bathroom door to start undressing and Hermann looked away swiftly. When Newton had shut the door with a quiet snap of the lock he allowed himself to breathe again.

 

_ They tell me you are wicked, and I believe them. _

 

Hermann shook the poem from his mind in a fit of irritation only for it to sneak up on him again while lying in bed with the lights off and the room blessedly still. But Newton was not wicked, and Hermann was no poet. The plant across the room shivered softly; a dark shape with no distinct outline.

 

***

 

Newton had no appreciation for the cleanliness of the old Anchorage facility. Specimens had been picked up and shipped in, and the old K-Sci building was busier than Hong Kong had ever seen in her cluttered and constrained chambers. Newton had no appreciation and no patience for the group of people he was now in charge of. Expert on Kaiju he was, a decent teacher as well, but not when his main goal in life was to incapacitate himself as regularly as circumstance would allow.

 

He’d been in many military facilities over the course of the war and had hoped never to have to step foot in one again, with their bunker-like qualities and the fact he would be trapped with the same people again under the weight of responsibility and imminent annihilation. It was enough to drive him up the wall, or rather to drive him further up the wall.

 

His first week in Anchorage was almost like a game; hide from anyone in charge and waste time with a can of spray paint and a sock. Then they started figuring out his hidey-holes and put him on a shorter leash. Hermann watched him with a now endless supply of worry and frustration, which only made Newt want to hightail it back to his bunk anyway.

 

 

He had been fiddling with the parts to a makeshift UV light so he could bring his tomato plant in from outside when there was a knock at his door. His brow furrowed, did he space out on needing to be somewhere? Despite the urgency with which Hermann and Mako had ushered him up to Alaska, he hadn’t really had much to contribute yet besides overseeing of continued study of Kaiju physiology. It almost seemed like he was here as a conversation fixture, up until Hansen called him for a private meeting.

 

Newt dropped the tools he’d been holding, eyes snapping shut with a shimmer of cyan. Nope, no, not right now. He was busy.

 

Herc wanted him to go over if it would be possible for him to drift again.  _ Again _ . For science, of course, for the fact that the Anteverse was testing the handle of their collective kitchen door while they crawled around on the tiled floor behind cabinets like children. He bit his lip, now was maybe not the best time for a Jurassic Park reference. He had looked at the new marshal with no expression, hands moving in his lap without sending any signals to his head.

 

“I can’t.”   
  
“You can.”

 

“No I mean, There isn’t anything to drift with even, there’s, you don’t have anything for me to drift with. Do you? You don’t, you can’t.” He remembered standing up and knocking the chair over while trying to push it back in, then being in the hallway, grounded by a hand on his shoulder.

 

“Dr. Geiszler, I’m not making a request.” Five years and heartache had deepened the lines in Herc’s face, aging him more than the stress of action had seemed to in the previous war.

 

_ And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the _

_ faces of women and children I have seen the marks _

_ of wanton hunger. _

 

***

 

Hermann was in the K-Sci breakroom with half a package of shortbread cookies and a cup of coffee that was so far from being the first neither of them could keep track. Newt was sitting up on the counter with his ass half in the sink and his face mashed up against the refrigerator.

 

“You cannot be serious.”

 

“I’m dead serious.”   
  
“I fail to find the humor in this situation, Newton, please.”   
  
Newt sighed and turned his face away until the bridge of his glasses cut into the cartilage of his nose. “That was an accidental pun I swear, but also I’m serious about sleeping in the snow. Look, anything is better than what Herc is asking me to do-”   
  
“He is a  _ Marshal  _ now-”   
  
“Wow I don’t give a shit! He wants me to put my brain in a fucking blender, he wants me to open a bridge I kind of regret opening in the first place. He wants me to-”   
  
“Drift with a Kaiju brain, yes I know. Somehow forgot to consider the fact that I will be right next to you.”

 

That caused a total stop to conversation flow and Newt to sit up ramrod-straight. He glared at Hermann, stomach twisting, and had to put his hands on his knees before he forgot where he was. “You aren’t going in with me.”   
  
Hermann scoffed and raised his brows in a way that make Newt want to claw them off. “I will do as I must, as you will too. This isn’t and never has been about us, you selfish prick.”

 

“I’m selfish? I’m, ohh…” Newt thrust himself from the counter and marched out of the room. He had no intention of returning to either his room or the lab, despite knowing they’d just find wherever he chose to hide this time.

 

It wasn’t that Newt wanted to die, but he wished he had done a bit more damage before the government had found him. The old Jaeger bays were in disrepair and entirely blocked off from the main entrances, but Newt had a hunch if he went down to the truck entrances he’d be able to get lost in the mess of wires and scaffolding. A freezing walk around the outside of the Sciences and Administration buildings and down a set of stairs taller than any apartment he’d ever lived in surrounded his senses with cement and muddy snow. The truck entrance was all pale lavender crossed by an orange so bright it hurt his eyes, the sun descending but still high enough to peek down into the man-made chasm, and he was happy to duck in through a side door. From there it was a rushed clamber to find someplace suitable enough to squeeze himself into.

 

Sitting with his back to machinery and his knees bent over a few folds of chain, he let his head fall back against cold metal. Already he was shivering and with the sun on its descent so soon he was about to get much colder, but right now it was worth it. To be away from Hermann was worth the chill. Which, if he was being honest with himself, sucked. He didn't hate Hermann, quite the opposite, but the problem was they were such differently minded people. Not to mention Hermann was the one to drag him here with expectations Newt couldn't live up to anymore. He couldn't, he had spent five years making damn sure of it, and somehow that made him selfish. Ha! Not wanting to hook back up to an alien hivemind was somehow the pinnacle of selfishness. Not wanting to open up his very being to the creatures that wanted him dead, him specifically for being a shitty tattletale.

 

Newt shivered hard and wrapped his arms around himself, longing for anything to huff. They wouldn't even give him cigarettes. Something clattered to the ground with a resounding clang some few meters away and Newt grit his teeth to silence their chattering, eyes wide.

 

“Newton this is no time to be playing games for children, come back to the lab.” Hermann sounded winded and worn thin, and it made him ache in a way he failed to bury properly. “I saw you come in here so there's no point in staying silent!”

 

There was another clatter and the sound of an open palm smacking concrete floor. “Goodness sake… Newton! Do not make me wander around this god forsaken garbage heap!”

 

Newt shivered again and ducked his head to make a noise of discomfort. “Y’know you could just leave, I haven't been doing much of use lately anyway.”

 

Hermann went quiet for a few heartbeats before shuffling closer, appearing from behind a stack of crates like a phantom in the gloom. “You'd be of more use if you stopped moping in seclusion.” He looked as irate as he sounded, but as he drew closer his features softened.

 

Newt sighed and sat up, crossing his legs. “Hansen wants me to drift with them again. You know I can't do that, you know  _ why _ , right? Like, I know you give a shit about me so don't act like I’m being unreasonable.” He watched Hermann's dress shoes and cane pick through debris across the floor towards him.

 

“I understand that you are afraid,” Herman began unevenly, most of his focus on not falling again. When he reached Newt's cubby he leaned his cane against some tarped machinery and lowered himself to the floor in front of him. “I understand that you are damaged, that you did it to yourself, that you don't want to experience the mindscape of a hivemind. What I am failing to understand is why you can't move past it for the greater good of our entire race. We must drift again, we must find out what they're planning and how to stop them, therefore you and I must be humanity's spies.” The conviction in his voice sapped every ounce of fighting energy out of Newt’s grasp. He sighed, shifting until he was beside Hermann enough to lay his head on the man’s shoulder. The collar of Hermann's jacket held onto the moisture in his breath as he thought over how to explain how wrong this all was.

 

“It's not that I'm afraid. I mean, I am, but that isn't the point here. Dude, I already can't get any sleep, I can't relate to people super well, and since the last time these bitches crawled around on the planet I've been actively freaking the fuck out at every possible and inopportune moment. I-” They hadn't spoken properly since he left the PPDC post-Pitfall, hell he hadn't touched Hermann more than frustrated pushing and pulling. “It's not like being a spy. It's being a double agent, it's fucking submitting to the Borg, it's giving up my whole sense of self and telling some aliens everything I know in return for whatever I can make sense of. It won't help us this time, I'm warning you right now.”

 

Hermann grew quiet, slipping an arm around Newt’s back to hold him close. He nosed his face down into Newt’s greasy, unwashed hair and sighed. “Double-agents… That sounds rather bad.” Newt snorted.

 

“Yeah that would be because it is bad, it’s terrible, it’s fucking horrific and you want me to just go with it. You want me to do this because you think it’s going to save everyone but it’s not! If we do this dude, we’re all going to die miserably. Miserably, like vermin choking on poisoned cheese.” He didn’t know when he started weeping but it started to choke him just then, cutting off his tirade before he could get up into a fervor. Cool, chalky hands pulled him closer into what was suspiciously similar to a hug.

 

“We will not die like vermin, we will not die. We’ll speak with Marshal Hansen and he will give this the consideration it deserves, but you must explain yourself instead of just yelling or sulking.”   
  
“He won’t listen, you know that. He doesn’t have a whole lot left, he just wants to punch a kaiju again before he flickers out.”   
  
“That’s cruel, Newton.”   
  
“It’s true.”

 

***

 

The tomato plant, brought back inside, did not flourish. It didn’t enjoy the cold nor the sunlamp nor the water nor anything else that Newt could give it, and he was having a difficult time coping with each browned and fallen leaf. He ignored his assistants in the lap, leaving them to work on their own, and he ignored Hermann for as long as the other man would let him. This didn’t turn out to be more than another few days, after which he found himself walking step for step beside him on the way towards the mess hall.

 

“Something is on your mind, Newton. Besides the drift and our impending doom, of course.”   
  
“You are, as always, the light that shines in my darkest hours. Yes, Hermann, something is fucking bothering me. You dragged me up here into frozen hell and my plant is dying.” Newt ground his teeth and stuffed his icy hands deep into his pockets in the hope they might stop aching.

 

Hermann turned to him incredulously and likely would have grabbed for him if his cane wasn’t in the hand closest to Newt. “Your pl- the world is in peril and you’re crying over a dead shrub?”

 

“You bet your ass I’m crying over my plant you son of a bitch, I grew that plant from seeds, that plant is my baby, dude. That plant was my hope for the future and the only thing actually keeping me alive for a little while. And now it’s dead as a doornail.” He sniffled and wondered if it was snot or blood this time. Either way, he was handed a tissue.

 

Hermann spoke as he held the tissue to his nose, not yet willing to check what exactly he was leaking. “My apologies, I somehow managed to forget that you devolved into a vagrant directly after leaving the PPDC with nothing but your plant to keep you company. By any chance did you name it Wilson?”

 

“I will have you know her name was Karen and she was the best kid a guy could ask for.” That got him nothing but an eye roll.

 

“Do eat something today, you can’t ignore your bodily requirements much longer or you’ll wind up in medical.” Hermann handed him an empty tray to dissuade him from arguing. He was in luck, Newt was absolutely starving.

 

***

 

“My god.” Hermann had dropped his chalk and was staring at the blackboard with a look of utter shock. The lab was empty except for him and Newt and the silence yawned, it rang, and then it was shattered by one dull clatter and a whisper.

 

“You okay there, dude?” Newt pulled himself to his feet and came to stand beside him, looking over the chalkboard. “... Wait-”   
  
“Oh my God.” Hermann didn’t look away from his markings, hand still hanging in midair, trembling. “Newton I know how they could get through. I know how they can create another breach, I know, _ I know _ .”

 

Cold, intense fear seeped into Newt’s veins, into his bones. Hermann knew how the Precursors might get through again, and now so did he.

 

“We can’t drift, we really cannot do this man, we can’t, because-”

 

“If we do we’re fucked.” Newt couldn’t help but look down in mild shock as Hermann sucked in a breath, seemingly snapped out of his panic freeze by his own language. He turned to stare at Newt and the detached expression there made Newt pull him close, into the tightest grip he could get. He grabbed fistfuls of Hermanns jacket and held him until his arms ached, until they sunk down and tumbled to the floor to sprawl uselessly on their sides.

 

“We won’t, Hermann breathe slower, come on ma,n I need you to calm down before you pass out.” His voice shook but it was nothing compared to the way the other was trembling, bodily now. Hermann lifted his head to reveal a trail of blood seeping from his left nostril. Newt cleared it away from his lip with a swipe of his thumb, then leaned in and pressed his lips to Hermann’s brow. “We won’t.”

 

Hermann blinked slowly, then again, until he came back to himself enough to look ill as opposed to spaced way the hell out. “Help me up, help- we need to speak with the Marshal  _ now _ .”

 

The two of them struggled to their feet and rushed from the K-Sci department to the main portion of the facility, to the Marshal’s office, to standing on one side of a desk while Herc Hansen quickly rose to his feet on the other. “Gentlemen-”

 

“The drift will kill us all, Marshal,” Newt had to wince at the raw pleading in Hermann’s tone. “I know how another breach might be opened, if we drift, and I do mean either of us, it will only be giving this vital information directly to the minds of the enemy. They will know, they  _ will  _ implement it, and we  _ will die _ .” He gasped for breath and ducked his head, holding tight to the edge of Hansen’s desk for support. The Marshal looked like he might pop a vein in that shaved head of his.

 

“Gentlemen, I’m going to need more than a bit of panicked yelling from the two of you to take your drift off the table.”

 

Hermann’s head shot back up with look of disdain Newt had, until now, figured was reserved only for him and particularly irksome interns. “As if you would understand a word of the proof I have waiting in the lab.”

 

“Dude-”   
  
“Excuse me? Doctor Gottlieb, believe me I am well aware of the pressure we’re all under but I am still your commanding officer-”

 

“Then I shall sum it up for you in small terms. If I hook my brain up to an alien hivemind with the information of how to open the breach in my mind, which i am sharing with the enemy, then they will use that information to once more begin rampaging the earth and  _ God knows _ we will not survive this time.” Hermann jolted and rocked back on his heels when Hansen kicked the desk.

 

“Then what do you suggest, Doctor? What is it that your two minds, and I say two because it has been brought to my attention on multiple occasions that you’re ignoring your teams,  _ what do you suggest we do? _ Because I damn well don’t have a backup plan. This was the backup plan. The two of you were my backup plan because guess what boys, most of our pilots are dead, and we don’t have any robots.” He clasped his hands at his chest and glared down at them like perhaps, if he looked intimidating enough, neither of them would mention the way his face was blotching up around the eyes.

 

Silence once more owned the night and Newt hunched his shoulders to stretch some of the ache out. “We get someone else.”

 

Hansen’s eyes darted to his. “How brave of you, Dr. Geiszler.”   
  
“Look pal I saw his chalky chicken scratch too, it’s legit. If we do this your way we’ll just be bringing them to us and wasting everything Chuck and the others fought for. I’m not the right guy to act like a paradigm of compassion but come on, do not do this.” Newt pressed his hands together and brought them to his lips, thinking and shifting his weight from one foot, then the other. “You either let us oversee a couple geeks from K-SCI drift with that brain you salvaged, or the two of us fuck off and you go to sleep knowing you didn’t hand pertinent info to the kaiju on a silver platter.”

 

***

 

Newt laughed until his lungs hurt from the cold, all the windows in the jeep rolled down to let the icy air rush through their hair.

 

“Are we really doing this?” He looked over at Hermann, who was grinning just as brilliantly.

 

“Of course we are.”   
  
“This is desertion, I think. It’s illegal.”   
  
“Leaving is not nearly the most illegal thing we’ve just done, Newton.”

 

With a giddy laugh bubbling up in his throat Newt leaned back in his chair, watching Hermann as he drove. He was right; erasing the blackboards, erasing the hard drives, and stealing a car were definitely some kind of theft/treason/war crime combo that was going to bite them in the ass later, and bite down hard. One one hand anxiety was a hard thing to ignore, but on the other  _ God damn _ that was cool. Newt rubbed his face, the laugh escaping in short gasps.

 

“So, your hovel in Chicago is absolutely out of the question.” Hermann glanced at him, his head tilted just so in the manner he usually affected when joking. “Where are we running off to?”

 

Newt sat up again and chewed his knuckles. “... Germany. We can get ourselves on a plane to Russia before they manage to toss us on the no-fly list and then we can get to Berlin, or some cottage in the woods.”   
  
“You want to escape the military to live out that gay fairytale fantasy you had while we were still writing letters?” Hermann’s teeth were showing he was smiling so hard, knuckles white on the steering wheel. Newt barked a laugh.

 

“Obviously. Hit the gas, dude.”

 

_ Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with _

_ white teeth, _

_ Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young _

_ man laughs, _

_ Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has _

_ never lost a battle, _

_ Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse. _

_ and under his ribs the heart of the people, _

_Laughing!_


End file.
